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Nanomed Line on the Horizon

GRENOBLE, France and BERLIN, Germany – Sept. 2, 2013 – Leading industrial and academic experts, national authorities, and European Commission (EC) representatives will meet at the 2013 European Technology Platform on Nanomedicine (ETPN) Annual Event and General Assembly on 1-2 October at CEA-Leti in Grenoble, France, to implement recommendations identified by the nanomedicine community that will shape the future of the sector in Europe.

The ETPN event is organised by Leti, a leading French research and technology organisation focused on nanotechnologies and their applications in healthcare. It aims to provide further details on the ETPN’s recommendations for nanomedicine under the upcoming Research Framework Programme Horizon 2020, the EU's main instrument for research funding in Europe, launching from 2014-2020.

Patrick Boisseau, chairman of the ETPN, said:

“The first line has been crossed with the official renewal of the ETPN as a European Technology Platform, which represents an increasingly key element in the European innovation ecosystem and a main bridge between the community and the EC that is needed to implement Horizon 2020.”

He added, “We look forward to welcoming all European stakeholders involved in the nanomedicine field during the ETPN GA at CEA-Leti. Organising our annual event at this widely recognised scientific location will bring the ETPN even closer to the nanomedicine community and will provide participants with the opportunity to visit state-of-the art facilities on site.”

The event aims at establishing the ETPN’s new action plan with a strong focus on strengthening industry engagement and extending the platform’s community as nanomedical R&D is expected to progress in the coming years from the pre-clinical to the clinical testing stage. Furthermore, future milestones will be set for the implementation of the recently released White Paper’s concepts elaborated by the NANOMED2020 European consortium to drive innovation across Europe in nanomedicine. The White Paper, titled “Contribution of Nanomedicine to Horizon 2020”, is available for download on the ETPN website: www.etp-nanomedicine.eu/etpn-white-paper-2013.

To efficiently support and manage the translation of excellent research into innovative medical products in areas of unmet medical need, the nanomedicine community strives to set up a Translation Hub as an umbrella of dedicated new infrastructures. Notably, this includes a dedicated Translational Advisory Board to select, guide and push forward the top translatable concepts, a novel funding instrument for SMEs, and an EU-NCL infrastructure with the strong involvement of its U.S. counterpart, the Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory (US-NCL) in Frederick, Maryland.

On October 1, following keynote openings from high-level representatives of the French government and the EC, selected experts and leading industry specialists will introduce the latest issues evolving around the nanomedicine ecosystem and value chain.

The ETPN GA preliminary programme and online registration form are publically available on the ETPN Website: www.etp-nanomedicine.eu/ga2013.

About ETPN

The European Technology Platform Nanomedicine was established in 2005 as a joint venture of the European Commission and CEOs of large industrial companies, SMEs and academic research institutions to investigate and advance joint activities in the area of nanotechnology in medicine. Since 2005 the ETPN published a number of strategic documents outlining the needs and roadmaps for nanomedicine research in Europe. The ETPN contributed to set up numerous European funded projects providing a first impression of the conditions for a suitable social and economic environment and the structural requirements for an efficient translation of R&D results into innovative nanomedicine. The ETPN supports its members in coordinating their joint research efforts and improving communication amongst the members as well as towards the European Commission and the European Member States.

For more information, visit www.etp-nanomedicine.eu.

The renewed list of recognised ETPs is publically available on the European Commission's ETP website:

http://cordis.europa.eu/technology-platforms/individual_en.html.

About CEA-Leti

Leti is an institute of CEA, a French research-and-technology organisation with activities in energy, IT, healthcare, defence and security. Leti is focused on creating value and innovation through technology transfer to its industrial partners. It specialises in nanotechnologies and their applications, from wireless devices and systems, to biology, healthcare and photonics. NEMS and MEMS are at the core of its activities. An anchor of the MINATEC campus, CEA-Leti operates 8,000-m² of state-of-the-art clean room space on 200mm and 300mm wafer platforms. It employs 1,700 scientists and engineers including 320 Ph.D. students and 200 assignees from partner companies. CEA-Leti owns more than 2,200 patent families. For more information, visit www.leti.fr.

About NANOMED2020

NANOMED2020 is a Coordination and Support Action under the FP7-Health aiming at delivering concrete recommendations to the European Commission to push forward the field of nanomedicine under Horizon 2020. Amongst other activities, NANOMED2020 is focusing on 1) federating the nanomedicine community and establishing a European landscape via mapping all relevant actors, projects and infrastructures and 2) identifying the key bottlenecks of the value chain to focus on to leverage the translational possibilities of the development process and to bring in the end more products onto the market. This project involves seven partners across Europe including the ETPN Secretariat, the CLINAM foundation (Switzerland), the National Institute of Health Carlos III (Spain), Bioanalytik-muenster e.V (Germany), Nanobiotix SA (France), the Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi ONLUS (Italy), and SINTEF (Norway).